RAIN SOAKED RED BULL RING MAKES FOR DIFFERENT DAY 1

• Iannone in Q2 time in FP1 before rain.
• Rins not far behind top times.
• No improvements during wet afternoon.

Just 5 days after the conclusion of the Czech Grand Prix it was time for the riders to rejoin the track again in Austria. The Red Bull Ring in Spielberg was dry for the morning’s FP1 session, allowing Iannone and Rins to try and reconfirm some settings tried during the post-Brno test and push to set good times early on. Both riders had a smooth FP1 and Iannone set the 5th fastest time. Rins was just over a second off the top in 14th.

For FP2 the rain which was feared and predicted, arrived. Michelin’s soft-soft rain tyre combo saw the riders gradually take to the water logged track after a delayed start. Alex Rins was one of the first out of the box and the Spaniard used the session to gain some wet experience. Andrea Iannone soon joined him. The FP1 times stood, meaning that the order of tomorrow’s qualifying sessions could all depend on the conditions in FP3.

Davide Brivio - Team Manager
“It was a different type of day today because we had rain in the afternoon and that stopped us from finishing the set-up job that we started in the morning. We knew that it could rain so we tried to make a quick time attack in FP1, it worked well for Andrea as he was able to be in the Top 10. And Alex was very very close, but just outside the Top 10 - by one tenth of a second! Then the rain stopped us, so we’ll see tomorrow. Unfortunately it looks like it will be wet tomorrow too. We’ll try to get prepared.

Andrea Iannone
“This morning the feeling with the bike was good, despite the fact that we were losing out a bit on acceleration. In any case, in the corners we could recover and the grip wasn’t bad. The first corner, especially this morning, was good. But in the wet the front was slipping on the left hand corners. Tonight we’ll look at the data and tomorrow we’ll have some new ideas.”

Alex Rins
“It was nice to ride on a wet track, at the beginning the track was completely wet, but I don’t have any problems riding in those types of conditions. This morning the conditions were not bad, and we put some new tyres in at the end but we missed the Top 10 by a tenth of a second. For sure we can improve tomorrow, even if it’s still wet.”